Sunday, 12 January 2014

'Black Highway'

‘I’m really struck by how quiet they all
are, and yet you are aware that it would be so noisy above from the motorway.
There is a real sense of them being in-between spaces…’ This is the useful
comment made by my wife, Diane, as we visited ‘Black Highway’ yesterday
morning, as it opened its doors to the public for the first time.

‘Why is that painting so baggy after what I
told them to do? It looks terrible! There are too many pieces. The labels are
too big? Why has that piece got the same title as that piece? What are those
big cardboard labels sticking out of the back of the frames? Why is there no
lighting on that painting? It’s too dark. What is that ‘toilets’ sign doing sat
next to the painting? Those two are hung too close together…I wouldn’t have put
the smaller one underneath the larger piece like that. I should have supervised
it myself! I’m a control freak…I can’t get any sense of what it looks like.
What does it say to anybody?’ These were some of the less useful comments
swimming around my head as I looked around. Sometimes it’s a drag being the
artist.

Hopefully, as more visitors respond in the
next few weeks I’ll get a better sense of it all. Hopefully…